Tuesday, September 19, 2006

That Inevitable DayMany of you know that my father has suffered from Alzheimer's disease for years.

Recently, health care providers have added two words to this diagnosis, "end" and "stage." End-stage Alzheimer's is the clinical way of saying that Dad is dying. He has a degenerative disease for which there is no cure.

The Alzheimer's Association website explains that something called "amyloyd plaque" builds up around the outside of nerve cells in the brain, prohibiting healthy brain function. Researchers know that this material is made up of protein, but they don't know yet how it impedes normal cell activity.

Such a microscopically small thing means that my father has forgotten how to button a shirt, buckle a belt, tie a shoe. The simplest procedures of daily dress and personal hygiene have been daunting for some time now, and would long ago have been impossible to negotiate were it not for Mom's transcendent courage and patience.

But, the inevitable, long-forecast next step has finally come. Dad can no longer be cared for in his own home. We moved him to a temporary Hospice residence this weekend, and will soon place him in a residential care center.

It is hard to see this once robust man now so slumped and crumpled. No measure of stoic bravery can shield his four sons from the awful realization that dementia has robbed them of their bigger-than-life daddy.

Even Mom, who has tenderly noted every single minute graduation of this disease's progress, was not prepared to see her husband in yet this new state of reduction.

Aging ain't for sissies. Browning must have been on drugs the day he wrote that ridiculous thing, "Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be, / The last of life, for which the first was made."

I guess denial is a fine invention as long as it works. It no longer did the trick for what I saw this weekend.

5 comments:

Marsha
said...

Charlie,I know how much you love your dad and how difficult this is for you and your family. My prayers are with you as you enter the next stage of the journey. We love you and miss you LOTS!!!Your Friend,Msmith

charlie,my dear brother,i too know how you love your father.your dad didnt carve those names into the table for nothing.you and your brothers are what he loved the most,and now in the time coming you will have each other and be at your mothers side.my prayers for you and your family will be for strenght and peace.linda

You so eloquently write of the painful process of dealing with your families journey with Alzheimer's disease. Our hearts go out to you and family for all that this entails for each of you. We saw this very same thing with Clyde's brother and his family. It is not easy to watch a strong and healthy person who is a giant to a young son, slowly deteriorate into a helpless individual unable to communicate his thoughts and feelings. In those lucid times, it seems they are "normal" if only for a short while, but quickly they return to a fog, unable to find their way. Please know you are in our prayers. Clyde and Judy

robert browning on drugs!! may it never be!! those words were stingingly true, and might ring truer to you now than they did before. most people interpret the "grow old along with me; the best is yet to be" quote as some kind of touching marriage-proposal. it's in fact the opposite: a looking-forward to death, and a view of our withering bodies as the pathway to heaven, put in the mouth of an old rabbi talking to his young student.

the poem is so beautiful, and contains such truths that speak to me about your situation and your father's personality, which i feel i've glimpsed through your stories and remembrances:

Grow old along with me!The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was made:Our times are in His handWho saith "A whole I planned,Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

Poor vaunt of life indeed,Were man but formed to feedOn joy, to solely seek and find and feast:

For thence,—a paradoxWhich comforts while it mocks,—Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:What I aspired to beAnd was not, comforts me.

But all, the world's coarse thumbAnd finger failed to plumb,So passed in making up the main account;All instincts immature,All purposes unsure,That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packedInto a narrow act,Fancies that broke through language and escaped;All I could never be,All, men ignored in me,This, I was worth to God.

About Me

Charlie Johnson is the founding co-pastor of Bread, a non-traditional faith community in Fort Worth, Texas.
He has been in pastoral ministry for over 30 years, serving with churches in Kentucky and Texas, including the Trinity Baptist Church of San Antonio (2001-2006) and the Second Baptist Church of Lubbock (1989-2001).
He taught preaching at McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University (2006-2008), and was inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers in 2008.
He is married to Jana and has three children. Chad (34) is married to Mary Beth Lancaster of Oklahoma and manages the Rocky Creek Ranch west of San Angelo, TX. Cliff (30) works the oil fields of Midland, Texas. Chris Anne (27) works and lives in Fort Worth. He has a granddaughter, Corley Elizabeth, age 3, and a grandson, Clayton Foster, 6 months.